Lieutenant Colonel French Air Laborie

The Diplomacy of the Jaguar: French Airpower in Postcolonial African Conflicts: Wright Flyer Paper No. 39 Lieutenant Colonel French Air Laborie

Publisher Marketing: The legacy of its former status as a colonial power has left France with a strong commitment in Africa. To secure its interests and aspire to a great foreign policy, France has used the cooperation agreements with its former colonies to maintain its influence on the continent, leading the French military to intervene in multiple African crises since decolonization in 1960. This paper addresses the use of airpower during the French military operations in Africa since 1960. Using case study methodology, it emphasizes the operational level of war and analyzes the use of the different French army, air force, and naval aviation operational roles; the adaptation of equipment to conditions in Africa; and the changes in the French-African policy that have influenced the use of airpower. The study argues that successes in Mauritania and Chad in the 1970s and 1980s convinced the French military to increase its reliance on airpower. The change in policy following the Rwandan crisis in 1994 did not alter this trend. On the contrary, the synergy between French airpower and special forces was critical in securing France's objectives during operations in the former Zaire in 2003 and the Central African Republic in 2007. However, the ongoing intervention in the Ivory Coast proved that a lack of airpower integration planning can lead to numerous challenges for the French military. To address that issue, the French air force needs to develop an operational doctrine that the joint force commanders can rely on to better integrate the use of airpower with the early stages of joint planning and get the full benefit of its flexibility, responsiveness, and firepower during the operation. Contributor Bio:  Air University Press Walter Gary Sharp Sr. serves as a senior associate deputy general counsel for intelligence at the US Department of Defense, where he advises on legal issues related to intelligence, covert action, intelligence and counterintelligence policy, intelligence oversight, information security, information sharing, security classification policy, information operations, and computer network operations. Prior to his appointment, Dr. Sharp served as an associate deputy general counsel for international affairs at the Department of Defense; the director of legal research for international, comparative, and foreign law at the Law Library of Congress; the director of global and functional affairs within the Bureau of Legislative Affairs at the State Department; and a principal information security engineer at The MITRE Corporation. A veteran with 25 years of service, Dr. Sharp retired as a decorated US Marine Corps lieutenant colonel with prior enlisted service. His military assignments include commanding officer of a field artillery battery, senior prosecutor, deputy legal counsel to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and international law adviser for the commanding general of the Unified Task Force in Somalia during Operation Restore Hope. Dr. Sharp's military decorations include the Defense Superior Service Medal, and his many awards for writing excellence and academic achievement include the Judge Advocate General's School Alumni Association Annual Professional Writing Award and an American Bar Association Award for Professional Merit. Dr. Sharp is the author of numerous articles and three books: UN Peace Operations (1995), CyberSpace and the Use of Force (1999), and Jus Paciarii (1999). He serves as an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center where he currently teaches a counterterrorism course, The Law of 24. He has also taught graduate-level seminars on United Nations peace operations and international peace and security. He lectures internationally in universities and other diverse public forums on wide-ranging topics of international law and national security law, such as international peace and security, conflict management, and peacekeeping operations.